The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Advanced for the upcoming session is scheduled to be held on May 24, 2015. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Bombay has released the dates on the official website. The examination in two papers will be held for a duration of three hours each. According to the schedule, Paper I will be held between 9 am and 12 pm and Paper II will take place between 2 pm and 5pm.

Recently, the Union ministry of human resource development and the IIT council had released a notification for a change in the eligibility criteria for IIT- JEE advanced. Aspirants can now apply to the entrance test on acquiring 75 per cent marks in their Class 12 board examination. Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is an all India common entrance examination conducted to provide admissions to candidates in various engineering courses. The entrance examination is conducted in two parts, JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced. Candidates who clear IIT-JEE main examination are eligible to appear for IIT-JEE advance, which provides an entry to IITs. The new relaxation allows more students to participate in the examination and increase their chances of admission to pioneer engineering colleges.

In the year, 2014, almost 13 lakh candidates appeared for the examination out of which 88 per cent cracked the examination in the first attempt. Out of this number, 12 per cent students passed the examination in their second attempt. Aspirants can appear for JEE Advance examination for a maximum of two consecutive years and not more than that.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are considering relaxing the top 20 percentile criterion for eligibility for their engineering entrance exam, JEE Advanced. The plan was suggested in the meeting of the Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the IITs last week. Currently, for admission to any of the IITs, one needs to get an all India rank in JEE (Advanced) and also be in the top 20 percentile of the successful candidates of their state boards. This change in the criteria is after many IITs complaining about deserving students not getting admissions due to differences in the marking scheme of various state boards.

This year, close to 240 aspirants could not get admission into any IIT this year despite a great score in JEE (Advanced) as they could not meet the percentile condition. The alternative now being talked about is giving weightage to the student’s board exam marks.

The final decision will be made in the meeting of the IIT Council on September 22. Smriti Irani, HRD minister, will also be attending this meeting.

Chemical engineering is a vast field that applies to every aspect of physical sciences(physics and chemistry) and life sciences (biology, biochemistry and microbiology). The engineers in this field are more versatile and are involved in development, management, invention, design and processes in the industries.They work in several fields like food processing, healthcare, specialty chemicals, electronic and advanced materials, biotechnology, microelectronics,design, construction, environmental health, manufacturing, polymers, business services, among others.

Howto be a chemical engineer?

To be a chemical engineer, a candidate needs to qualify 10+2 schooling with more than 50%aggregate score. The candidate has to appear for the entrance exam that is conducted by IIT JEE and also by other universities and boards. If a candidate scores the required marks needed by the board, the student will be admitted to the particular university. The IIT JEE scores are also accepted by other universities.

To be a chemical engineer, you have to complete an undergraduate engineering course of four years. Post-graduation is another two years. One can also complete a diploma of three years in chemical engineering.

Qualification:The eligibility to get into a degree college is to have a 10+2 passing certificate, with 50 % marks in each: math, chemistry and physics.For diploma course, one should get at least 50% marks in 10th class.

Academic program

Since chemical engineering involves extensive study of various aspects of physical and life sciences, the curriculum is comprised of various subjects taught in different years of the course. Therefore, the syllabus too is elaborate and diverse. The whole program comprises eight semesters in the degree course and six semesters in the diploma course. Every year there are two semesters and candidates have to pass each semester.

The work of a chemical engineer involves construction, design, operation,installation, and maintenance of plants; manufacturing chemical products;supervision of chemical plants; gauging problems; extracting chemicals;developing processes; and many more things.

There are many opportunities for a chemical engineer, either in India or abroad. Jobs are available in public as well as government sectors. Chemical engineers get lucrative employment opportunities in large companies that manufacture food,fertilizer, specialty chemicals, paints, pesticides, plastics, polymers,pharmaceuticals, etc. One can also take up teaching as a career or go for research in other branches like atomic power plants and defense establishments.One can see the particular demand-rise in fields like nanotechnology and biotechnology.

The salaries of chemical engineers are very lucrative. However, it is based on the company you work for. Freshers can get an average salary of Rs. 25,000 per month to Rs. 30,000 per month, depending on the qualification, experience,ability and facility. Those holding a diploma degree will earn a little less than the degree-holders.

If you get a post-graduation degree in chemical engineering, you can earn a lot more and you get to enter new fields of interest as well.

Some of the companies who recruit chemical engineers are: Essar Oil Ltd,Coromandel Fertilizers Ltd, Reliance Industries Ltd, Gujarat Gas Company Ltd,Indo Gulf Fertilizers Ltd. You can also go abroad to try out new avenues and expand your earning potential.

It has been revealed that out of all the candidates who sat for JEE (Advanced) 2014, 88 per cent have cracked the exam, in the first attempt. Out of this number, 12 per cent students passed the exam in their second attempt. Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have been providing only two attempts to the candidates to qualify the examination for the past two years.

Last year only 69.6 per cent aspirants had passed the examination in their first team and 27.2 per cent candidates had cracked it in the second attempt. This shows a massive boost in the percentage level of the candidates, who have qualified the exam.According to a website, students who have qualified for the examination are from different strata of society. A total of 20,636 (76 per cent) who cracked the exam belong to urban centres whereas towns and villages account for 3, 862 (14.22 per cent) and 2, 654 (9.77 per cent) students respectively. The statistics show that 3,586 (13.2 per cent) students who qualified for the examination are from a family whose annual income is over Rs 8 lakh. Besides, 18.6 per cent of the qualified candidates, this year, have an annual family income of Rs 1 lakh.

JEE Advanced is held for admission to all 16 IITs. In a bid to take the examination to the next level, the IITs are working on a plan to take the JEE Advanced online by 2016-17.

Registration for JEE(Advanced)-2014 will be done online. For registration click here or enter the portalhttp://jeeadv.nic.in directly for registering.

The portal will open on May 4, 2014 12:00 AM and will close on May 09, 2014 5:00 PM (IST). Important dates are already available at http://jeeadv.iitkgp.ac.in (click here to know the dates)

Candidates will be required to Sign In with their JEE(Main)-2014 Roll Number and password and will be allowed to proceed only if they are eligible to write JEE(Advanced) based on cut off marks in Paper-1 of JEE (Main) – 2014. The cut off marks in various categories will be displayed in this web site from May 2, 2014 onwards.

On accessing the portal successfully, qualified candidates will be prompted to create new password for JEE (Advanced) – 2014 Registration and have to remember this password for all future operations. The Registration for JEE (Advanced) – 2014 is a three step process. Step 1: Fill the Registration Form, Step 2: Upload Certificates and Step 3: Pay the Registration Fee.

In Step 1, candidates will be guided to a page containing their academic and personal information as furnished during JEE(Main)-2014 registration. The page will contain further editable text-boxes for furnishing additional information such as Choice of Examination City for JEE(Advanced)-2014, Choice of Language of Question Paper and other important information.

The completion of Step 1 will lead to Step 2 where the candidate needs to upload certificates in accordance with the category and any special sub-category to which he/she belongs.

Candidates belonging to OBC-NCL category will have to specify their caste from a drop down list of their State as per the Central List of NCBC. They must ensure that they are uploading the certificate issued after 01.06.2013.

Candidates can view the certificates before final uploading.

In Step 3, only male candidates appearing from cities in India and all candidates appearing from Dubai, will be prompted to chose a mode of payment (click here to see the payment options). After the successful payment, a Registration Details page may be viewed and should be printed. This will complete the Registration Process. The candidates should preserve this Registration Details page.

Female candidates appearing from cities in India can view the registration details page and take printout of the same after completion of Step 2.

After successfully completing the registration process, candidates are advised to visit AdmitCard Download Portal for downloading the Admit Card in PDF (between May 11 to May 24, 2014). Kindly check for correctness of information and come to the Exam Hall with the printout of the downloaded admit card. The admit card must be printed in color.

In case the candidate is not in possession of the certificate in proof of the category under which he/she wishes to write JEE(Advanced)-2014, must upload the certificate in the Certificate Portal before 5:00 PM of May 31, 2014.

Any request of later change of category must be made before May 31, 2014, 5:00 PM. No such request will be entertained after this date. The change in category will be allowed only if the candidate’s score in Paper-1 of JEE(Main)-2014 is above the declared cut off marks in the category to which he/she wants to change.

In case of Persons with Disability (PwD), the appropriate certificate must be uploaded at the time of registration or latest by May 22, 2014, 5:00 PM. After the date of JEE(Advanced)-2014, no candidate will be included in PwD sub-category of any category.

Candidates may please note that, request for change of Centre will not be entertained under any circumstances.

Candidates may also note that request for change of Language of Question Paper will not be entertained.

All engineering colleges, including IITs, will have to conduct common counselling for students in 2014

New Delhi: All central government-funded engineering schools, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), will select students through a common entrance examination in 2015, merging the existing two-tier joint entrance examination (JEE), the human resource ministry has decided.

As a precursor to the new admission format, all engineering colleges will have to conduct common counselling for students in 2014, according to the government decision.

Currently, the JEE-Main is used as a selection examination for all central government-funded technical schools, including the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), while students opting for the IITs need to clear the JEE-Advanced examination.

The top 150,000 students of the main examination are eligible to sit for the JEE-Advanced test for a seat in the 16 IITs and Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad.

The human resource ministry has decided to merge the JEE-Advanced and JEE-Main entrance exams from next year and the IITs have been informed about it, said Ashok Thakur, higher education secretary.

In 2012, the government devised the two-tier JEE system, after almost a year of protests and deliberation with the IITs and other top technical schools, to reduce the influence of coaching centres on aspirants for the top technical colleges and making the admission process simpler for students.

“For this year, our agenda is that we want to have common counselling,” Thakur said. “We are very keen on joint counselling. That’s the issue and we want to get after them (IITs). Last year, we tried but IIT Delhi (the coordinating IIT) was very adamant.”

Under the current format, the IITs conduct student counselling first, followed by the NITs and other top schools, which are carried out after a month, especially after the Class-12 school board results are available. India has more than 23 school boards.

While the IITs and ISM admit more than 9,600 students a year at the undergraduate level, other top schools admit more than 25,000 students. At least 1.4 million students appeared for the JEE-Main exam last year and the top 150,000 sat for the JEE-Advanced test.

“This (two separate counsellings) defeats the purpose of a central exam. What we are asking them is to prepare one merit list,” said Thakur. The general perception is that IITs feel that they are a cut above the rest and it’s not advisable for them to sit with other technology and engineering schools.

The students of many NITs are very good and joint counselling will help the students and engineering schools in not just reducing hassles but will also help to reduce the number of seats falling vacant, says Thakur.

About 600 seats at the IITs and the NITs fell vacant in 2012 because of separate counselling that allows a candidate to receive offers from an IIT as well as an NIT at the same time.

A candidate who gets an offer from an IIT and an NIT hangs on to the IIT seat while waiting for his choice of subject in an NIT. By the time the candidate decides on the final place to join, it is often too late for the colleges to fill up these vacant seats. Under the proposed common counselling system, a student will get only one choice. If a candidate does not accept it, then he will be given the option to join another school.

“The effort should be to make life easier for students. I don’t know about common counselling but if that reduces vacant seats, then it’s good. But from a student’s point of view, a good college with a good subject choice is very important,” said Amit Kumar Biswal, a JEE-aspirant from Hyderabad this year.

The IITs said the plan for a joint counselling may not yield the desired results. “Earlier, we used to do one round of counselling for admitting students, the government told us to do twice and then three rounds and we have done that. But has the situation improved? I don’t think so. Students take admission and then leave for a better course or leave for a foreign school later. How will you fill up those seats?” said H.C. Gupta, a professor of IIT-Delhi and chairman of the IIT-JEE Advanced exam last year.

A senior administrator from another leading IIT said a one-exam system is not a desirable format. “Once the new government comes, they may take a different view than what the present government thinks,” the official said, requesting anonymity.

On receiving a request from Govt. of Madhya Pradesh and aspirants of JEE (Main) 2014, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has extended the last date for filling up of online application form for the exam.

The request has been made due to the fact that the Govt. of Madhya Pradesh decided to participate in JEE (Main) after the start of process of application form. So, in view of this fact and in the interest of aspirants of JEE (Main) – 2014, the last date for filling up of online application form has been extended up to 06 January 2014.

It is further informed that the other terms and conditions for filling up the application form will remain same. The last date for filling up of application form for JEE (Main) 2014 shall not be extended any further.

NEW DELHI: After dilly-dallying for years, IITs have agreed to get themselves accredited by theNational Board of Accreditation (NBA), the premier accreditation body in the country. However, considering their high academic standards, IITs have been given the freedom to carry out the review themselves and submit the report to NBA.

IITs have also been asked to work towards reinforcing the brand so that it has better chances of making it to prestigious ‘QS Ranking’ of best institutions. IITs have also decided to continue with this year’s format of JEE (advanced) test without any change.

Talking to reporters at the end of the IIT Council meeting on Monday, HRD minister M M Pallam Raju said IITs agreeing for accreditation would help India become a part of the Washington Accord, an international agreement among accrediting agencies of 14 nations that recognizes engineering degree programmes of each other.

India is now a provisional member of the Washington Accord. One of the main criteria for any country to be part of the Accord is that its engineering degrees should be accredited. So far, IITs were lukewarm towards fulfilling this condition.

Raju said, “IIT directors felt that the annual review they subject themselves to will be enough and in line with the Washington Accord.” The minister had to face a volley of questions as to why an exception was being made for IITs and would it mean other engineering institutions also seek similar internal assessment instead of the one done by the NBA. Education secretary Ashok Thakur said, “IITs proposal would be now taken to the NBA.”

As decided in the last IIT Council meeting, performance review of directors once a year based on the vision and mission of the institute was also taken up. So far, review reports of directors of IIT Patna, Roorkee and Guwahati have been received. The review is to be done by the chairman of the board of governors of each IIT. In June, HRD ministry had written to the IIT Council seeking quick implementation.

The external peer review to be done once every five years by a committee of five eminent persons from industry and academia and an annual in-house department review was also decided in the last council meeting. But IIT Council in its meeting in July had requested that timeline for the review should be revised. On Monday the new timeline suggested by the IIT Council was considered. Now, the internal departmental review would be completed by December 2013. For external peer review, a panel of ten names of eminent persons from industry and academia would be sent to the HRD ministry by October.

Raju said in order to augment the number of PhDs from IITs, as suggested by the Anil Kakodkar committee, a number of decisions were taken in the last meeting. Kakodkar had said at least 10,000 PhDs should be graduating from 2024-25. Raju said one of the actions taken at the behest of HRD ministry was to request the chairman of National Coordination Board (NCB) of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) to allow third year BTech students from centrally funded technical institutions with Cumulative Performance Index of 7.00 to appear in GATE. Though Raju said it has already been implemented, the agenda document states that the GATE-NCB has referred the matter to the Kakodkar committee.

Other proposals to enhance PhD output were also discussed. This included giving option to a student after first year of a two-year MTech programme to switch to a dual degree of MTech and PhD. Students would get PhD fellowship for four years.

Another proposal is to induct the best BTech students from other Indian institutions at the end of their third year into a PhD programme at one of the IITs. The students have to be amongst the top 10% of their institution at the end of the third year. There is also a suggestion to start PhD for people working in industry and they would have to finish course work using National Knowledge Network.

As for financial autonomy, it was decided that if IITs raise 30% of non-plan expenditure themselves, a matching grant would be given by the government.

MUMBAI: Next year, the JEE-Advanced may change from being a paper-pencil entrance exam to a computer-based one. The decision on the switch will be taken when the Joint Admission Board meets in early September.

On Sunday, members of the board, the highest body that takes decisions on admissions to theIndian Institutes of Technology (IITs), said the JEE-Advanced in 2014 could be offered as a computer-based exam since “it is the way forward”.

“We discussed a proposal to offer the test on computer or, at least, to keep it as an option in the first year,” said IIT-Bombay director Devang Khakhar. He said the rollout looked possible since candidate numbers had dropped to 1.5 lakh.

A total of 12.82 lakh high-school graduates applied to take the JEE (Main) exam in 2013 when India took its big step towards the ‘one nation, one exam system’. Among them, only 1.74 lakh candidates took the computer-based test. The next level, which is the JEE (Advanced) test for admissions to the IITs, received 1.5 lakh candidates.

IIT-Kharagpur, which is in charge of conducting the JEE (Advanced) for 2014, will parse through the 2013 database. “As a starting point, we’ll see how many of the students who qualified for the IIT (Advanced) took the main test on computer,” said an IIT official.

Some logistical deviations will have to be considered. “We’ll have to run the computer-based tests and the paper-pen tests at the same time at all the centres across India,” he said. “We’ll have to be extremely cautious.”

NEW DELHI: Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) is not going to be a cakewalk any longer. From the current academic session class IX and X students of the Central Board of Secondary Education will not only have to appear for both the summative assessments (SA), but also score a minimum of 25% taken together to qualify for the examination.

Earlier students were graduated to the subsequent class if he/ she scores 33% in the complete assessment which includes four formative assessments and two SAs. There was no minimum pass marks for the SAs, which is the written examination conducted at the end of the two semesters.

The executive committee of the Board earlier this year has decided it would be mandatory for a student to appear in both the SAs in both classes IX and X. In case of non-appearance in SA1 due to illness the students will get an additional chance to appear by October 31 and in case of missing SA2 the student need to appear within a period of one month from the date of declaration of the results for class IX students. Similarly class X students too need to appear again for the exams in case they miss out.

But what is significant here is that students cannot pass an exam by simply grossing 33% any longer. They have score a minimum 25% in SA1 and 2 combined, which is 15 marks out of a total of 60 marks and a total of at least 33% in each of the five subjects of scholastic area.

According to chairman of CBSE, Vineet Joshi, the changes has been incorporated in the CCE scheme based on the feedback received from schools, students and parents. “Students were missing out on the practice of writing and therefore in the long run they may be at a disadvantage in terms of written communication. There are a total of two FAs in an academic year of which one is a written exam. But we have realized that it is not sufficient as they are more of multiple choice or short answers type. Therefore, it has been decided that students need to take the SAs seriously as well and just 33% will not be sufficient to pass the exam. One has to pass the SAs, which is to score a minimum of 25%.”

The board, however, has exempted from appearing in any one of the SA for students participating in sports at international or national level subject to prior approval.